Never veneered before and want to reveneer a table top

I bought the dining table several years ago and it has been sitting in my garage. The veneer was worn and rippled in several places and my first plan was to just sand it down and paint. I sanded until it was smooth and then primed – enough to make me rethink painting. I’m not crazy about painted wood, especially on tops.

So then I thought of veneer. I’ve always wanted to try it, not necessarily on a large piece. But this is not quality furniture and was cheap, so a good practice piece.

I went to Lowe’s to pick up some veneer and now my local store doesn’t carry it. That brought me here to look up an online source, and I read about veneering both sides of a piece of plywood for balance. I hadn’t planned to take this table apart to do the top, and the original veneer is still mostly there.

Should I forget trying to veneer this top? If not, do I need to get the original veneer off, and how?

8 replies so far

I would not veneer over the damaged stuff that’s on there now. Removing it might be easy (or not) but I would try a heat gun and go in small sections to loosen it up. If you get it all loose, then the remaining adhesive on the substrate should be removed. You could probably do by sanding, but maybe the same heat gun and a scraping first to get as much as possible off. I’m guessing you don’t have a vacuum press, or at least a bag big enough fr this top so determine the clamping strategy, or consider contact cement. Either have their pros/cons, and if you go contact cement you would be best off with paper backed veneer (try searching Cedan, they have nice stuff backed and unbacked in a variety of species). You could also use PSA veneer, if you do so I suggest putting a coat of contact cement on the substrate first, let it tack up as normal, then apply the PSA to that. Be aware, this has more grab and better bonding than just regular contact…and the PSA will grab and hold on contact; so caution is in order. I don’t think in this case you need to veneer the bottom, this is replacement of the surface veener, so the substrate should already be in balance for that (one would hope). Now that I’ve typed this out, maybe it’s just better to forget the whole thing. But remember : all this is just my opinion on it.

Seconding the “try a heat gun” recommendation. If that doesn’t work (and you’re committed to this), my end-game would involve a router sled , trying to take it off with a ¾” bit one pass at a time, sand down what remains.

I don’t think you need to veneer the bottom either. In terms of actually doing the veneer, I’d go back to good ol’ Titebond II applied with a hacksaw blade (the teeth scrape to get a fairly even surface) to both surfaces, allowed to dry 45 minutes (and not more than 2 hours), and then ironed on. Fill any gaps where the drying veneer pulls itself apart with the old cyanoacrylate and sanding trick.

I really like that technique shipwright. I’ll see if I can get the old veneer off with a heat gun. If I do get it off and decide to re-veneer, how would I do the edges? It looks like you put a band on that lid first and then butted the next pieces against it. But the edge of this table is round and has a bull nose edge.

That piece is another piece of veneer that I put on first but that doesn’t help you with the bull nosed edge problem.If you are veneering with the same wood as the edge, then you could run the veneer over and then re-round the edge. It should be seamless. If you decide to try this, research hammer veneering and do some practicing. There is a learning curve with hot hide glue but the upside is that you will end up never returning to your old glue. :-)

My first re-veneer project was a 4 ft diameter dining table. I bought some veneer with the PSA backing. I prepared my surface. This table had plastic laminate on it from a fad in the ‘60’s so I removed that to find a sheet of hardboard under it with at least a thousand screws holding it. Under that was some kind of black adhesive. I finally got all this prepared for my new veneer. I started at the center or strait edge in my case and I worked out to the round side. I used a roller I bought from someplace maybe Rockler and rolled this out and pressed it as I went. Don’t get the waxed paper trapped where you can’t get it from under the veneer. I think a coat of contact cement as Fred Hargis suggested would be a good idea however, my veneer is still holding fine after 15 years. I don’t remember where I bought my veneer. I am thinking it might have been Rockler. Don’t let it scare you but respect the process. Let us see it when you finish.